Architectural Fees

I'm doing a remodel on a small 1834 house in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. the house was last remodeled in 1968. I plan to replace the shingle roof with a standing seam metal roof and add four dormers and a stairway from the second floor to the attic, which will become an office/guest bedroom. The footprint of the house if 23' by 30'. I'm being quoted architectural fees of approximately $9,000 (~$100 per hour) to produce construction drawing that will conform with all codes. Is this in the ballpark? Pictures of the house are located at http://web.me.com/roberthess/Markwoo..._Virginia.html

I was told by a builder last summer that architects seem to want up to 10% of the cost of the project. $100k project they want $10k for the plans. When deciding on our plans we had quotes of around $3k. Magically the builders architect would create the plans for that price after discussion.
One architect that came out said he would draw up very rough plans & send us a proposal in a few weeks, 3 weeks later we called & asked about the proposal he was going to send us. Reply was they were backed up & it would get it out to us. Weeks later we received a bill for $1500 for working on our plans
Needless to say we replied that we were waiting on the proposal & rough draft & had never agreed to hire him. We also stated we had found someone else since they had never sent us the proposal

At that point I opted to save the $3k & do the plans myself
I had everything roughed out & measured already. We had someone do an outside view for $100 (and he also changed what I wanted done), but it was enough to get the foundation permit & have it poured

Architects' prices vary greatly. I've seen high-end residential plans in excess of $60,000. Cheap plans are a few hundred bucks, and they're cheap.

Although I'm definately an advocate for using a good architect, I'll remind you that your building permit should include a thorough plan review. That process will ideally catch anything with the structure that would violate the code...Not always...Depends on the plan reviewer.

I know a lot of architects that aren't all that well-versed in the code. Using one isn't a guarantee that they'll design it right.

These are my rough sketch plans, I started design in 05 when we bought the house & modified them thru 3 years as I worked on the rest of the house

I initially started in college with architect/engineering course
So I took drafting courses & did very well. I switched to computers & have used 3 different programs for design work - none of them over $100. So I have some what of a background

The designs for our house were ~35 cents a square foot for living space, ~25cents for non-living space. Seems like I paid around $1400 for my 3500 sqft house w 600 sqft garage. All designs were to code. We had 3 meetings with the architect: one to show him ideas we liked, 2 to review the "first draft" and 3 to go over the final product. This was in central indiana. This guy was a commercial architect who does houses "on the side" We retained rights to the drawings when they were done, we can copy at-will.

Last edited by moondawg; 03-04-2009 at 03:49 PM.
Reason: I had a 600 ft garage, not basement.